During my last year's attendance on the lectures, I became the inmate, for the purpose of walking the wards, of a certain marine hospital, situated on a certain western river—of which Randolph has recorded his opinion—where the patients receive—paradoxical as it may seem—the kindest, yet the grossest treatment imaginable.

There were four or five brother “Rats” besides myself residing in the hospital, all candidates for graduation, and consequently all desirous of obtaining sufficient medical lore to prevent us from being thrown higher at the “ides of March.”

Never before—at least by any of us—was such assiduity displayed; so much mental pabulum devoured; so many of the latent energies of studiousness called into play, as then. No case, however disgusting, was put in the objective; no symptom, however trivial, obscure, or mysterious, could pass unnoticed; and the proudest soar of the bird of Jove would have passed unheeded, had a sore of another description occurred coincidently. Fingers which the previous session had never been employed in higher surgery than forking a sleepy chum, or picking needlepoints out of a pretty seamstress's hand, now gracefully adapted the pliant bandage to the fractured limb, or drew the ruby with the lancet keen. No longer the sweet vision of midnight oyster-suppers illumined the mental horizon, obscured by the listening to of six long lectures daily. No longer at the “wee short hours avant the twal” was our Ganymede summoned to evoke the spirit of the whiskey jug. No longer musingly reclining did we watch the airy genii of the best cigar, borne up heavenward on the curling chariots of their consuming earthly tabernacles. No longer—pshaw! to comprise the whole, we were studying for our degrees, preparing for the opportunity of passing our opinion on the question, “Whether the sheepskin of a young graduate, applied to his back, would be a contiguous or a continuous membrane?”

Among the rest was Charley L———, a young fellow of considerable talents—well aware, by the bye, of their possession—who having heard of my reputation for cupping, was not long in bantering me to a trial of skill, having some pretensions that way himself.

“Tensas,” said he one night, when we had all assembled in the apothecary's shop of the establishment, to compare notes and discuss the day, “do you think you could cup an Irishman?”

“Cup an Irishman!” repeated I, “yes, or a Dutchman, or an eel, or a buck running, or a streak of slow lightning, or anything that wears four square inches of skin. But why do you ask, Charley?”

“Why, I tried to-day, and it took me so long, and was not well done at that, that I got in late to old D————'s lecture, and he looked as sour at me as if he had caught one of the vice presidents of the P. T. S., drinking something stronger than water.”

“Well, just show your Irishman to me, and if I don't scarify and cup him in ten minutes I'll treat—that is, take notes for the whole crowd to-morrow.”

“I'll give you half an hour, and you can't do it—scarify and put twelve tumblers on him. I'll bet you a box of cig—hem—give you choice of subjects at the next raising.”

“Done! when shall the trial come off?”

“Right off; everything is ready, Irishman and all.”

In the medical ward at that time was an Irishman, evidently not long caught, whose greatest disease, from all external indications, was poverty.

The weather being very inclement, and the hospital having the reputation of keeping up good fires, and feeding its inmates pretty well, Pat took an idea into his head that he would lay up within its friendly walls during the severity of the winter; so going to the mayor of the city, whose benevolent heart never allowed him to refuse an applicant for the city's charities, he obtained by his piteous representations and obvious want, a hospital permit, and was, in consequence of it, soon snugly ensconced.

Having the faculty of bending one knee, so that no efforts could straighten the joint, he came in as a case of chronic rheumatism, and manfully the rascal stood the kind exertions to relieve him, so as to deceive the most experienced, and cause the putting of him down in the books as one of the “incurables.”

Charley, however, having fine opportunities of investigating the case, had his suspicions aroused as to the reality of Pat's disease, and, determining to settle the matter, selected him as my cupping subject.

“Boys,” said he, “I believe Pat's shamming; suppose we tell him that old D———— has directed him to be scarified and cupped, and Tensas can apply the remedy!”

“Agreed!” said all with one voice. Filling a tray with tumblers and a bottle of alcohol, we proceeded in a body to the ward where the victim was placidly reposing.

Seeing us approach with all the apparatus for “making a night of it,” Pat imagined he was going to be put on a more stimulating course of treatment, and his eyes fairly glistened, and his leg was, if possible, drawn still more closely to his body as he took a mental view of his situation; no work, good lodgings, pleasant medicine, liberal diet, and at last, to cap the climax of his earthly felicity, the pure “Crame of the Valley.”

Well, Pat, my boy, how do you rise to-night?”.

“Faith, an' good troth, young docthurs, like Inglan's tare for the ould counthry's misry, I don't rise at all at all—not aven the laste bit; here is me stretched on me back like a nagur, unable to work for my praties, or a wee drap of the crathur, ochone! ochone!”

“Don't you improve any? Can't you walk a bit?”

“Shure, not a bit! How am I to travel when my fut is bent up to where a rich man's boot shakes hands with a puir man? ochone! Its 'frade I am I'll be always here, instid of warkin', an' drinkin', an' votin', an' bein' a fray-man, as me muther was to the fore.”

“I hope not, Pat,” said I, desirous of bringing the conversation to a close, “old D———— has directed me to cup you, and that is what has brought us up.”

“Cup me, is it? Well it's reddy I am—shure an' have been for the long time; make it strong with the whiskey; bless the ould man, I tould him the other day, when he was prachin' the could wather, that a good strong cup would cure me as well!”

Great was Pat's consternation when he found that the tumblers, from which arose the odoriferous scent of the alcohol, were to go on him, instead of their contents going in him. He would have demurred, but he saw the uselessness of the attempt, and therefore assented to the operation with rather a lank visage, I must confess.

I soon repented the wager, and wished myself well rid of my bargain; the rascal had perfect command of the muscles of his brawny chest, and no sooner would a cup be exhausted and applied, than with a sudden contraction of the muscles, he would send it, with a simmering noise, rolling to the distant side of the bed. I tried every way, in the usual manner, to make them retain their hold, but the task was fruitless; occasionally one would flatter me it was going to remain, but scarcely could I give my attention to the other side, when off it would come. The half hour wanted but ten minutes of being out, and the cups were still unapplied. I became almost desperate, and called up two long-nailed Kentucky nurses, and made them hitch their fingers in the folds of the integuments on either side, so as to hold the muscles tense until the cups could adhere. This plan bid fair to answer, and the jeerings, remarks, and shouts of laughter, at my apparent discomfiture, which had greeted me in that unusual place for mirth, somewhat subsided; one minute of the allotted time was left, and but one cup remained unapplied. Up to this time, the steward of the hospital had been waiting upon me, pouring the alcohol, with which to exhaust the cup, from a tumbler nearly full into an empty glass, and then turning it out, he would hand it to me, and by the time it was applied have another ready; but one remained, as I have said, and I was waiting for it, when Charley, who had a finale for his test which none of us anticipated, suddenly substituted for the empty glass, the one nearly full of pure alcohol; suspecting no such trick, and there being no time for critical examination, I stuck the candle to it, and essayed as the blaze burst out, to apply it high up on the Irishman's breast. With a rushing, roaring sound, out burst the flaming liquid all over the poor devil's body.

With a loud scream, amidst the roars of involuntary laughter which attended his advent, Patrick gave a spring nearly to the ceiling, and dashing like fragile reeds the sturdy men who were holding him to the floor, amidst the cries of fire! fire! curses in Irish, loud and long, and the crash of the shivering tumblers, as he shed himself of them, took refuge in a large bathing-tub full of water, which, fortunately for him, stood in the ward.

The shouts of fire alarmed the whole hospital, and here, pell-mell, came the patients to see where it was. Forms emaciated by consumption rustled against others distended by dropsy. Four forms lay mixed up in the hall, and all of them could only muster up two pairs of legs, a pair and a half of eyes, and four arms. It was as though a false alarm had been given by Gabriel, and only a partial resurrection had taken place.

In one of the upper apartments was a private patient, labouring under the disease indifferently known as the blue-devils, red-monkeys, seeing injuns, or man-with-the-poker, or rather that mysterious individual had succeeded in overtaking his victim, and awful licks, to be sure, he was giving. His delirium was, that he was an alligator, and that there was a blood-thirsty minnow determined on taking his life at all hazards. Great were his struggles to preserve himself, requiring the constant presence of two keepers to restrain him from self-immolation.

Hearing the shouts of fire from below, they, acting on the conservative principle, left their patient, and sought safety in flight, not long unfollowed by the drunkard, who proceeded down stairs, until he came to the ward from whence the shouts of laughter had not ceased to issue.

The door being open, in he marched, presenting a fearful aspect—nearly naked, his eyes blood-shotten, and glaring with the light of delirium, his teeth clenched, with the lips drawn apart, a slight foam resting on them, blood dripping from a wound in his forehead, and brandishing a huge medical appurtenance, acting on the principle of the force-pump, and familiar to children on a small scale.

Seeing Pat in the tub, the cynosure of all eyes, the man with the red-monkeys took an idea that he was the identical minnow aiming at the vitality of his alligatorship, and this would be a good opportunity of killing him off.

With a loud yell, he sprung towards poor Pat, who, perfectly bewildered, let him get nearly on him, before he thought of getting out of the way.

“Hould him!” he yelled, “the crathur's gone clane out of his head! Holy jabers! hould him! He'll be afther the killin' me!”

But no one having time, or showing a disposition to interfere, he found he would have to bestir himself in his own behalf, and the biggest tracks, and the fastest, and the more of them, were made by the man who, previous to the time, had not moved a step for months. Through the long hall, down the double steps, out of the yard, and over the commons he went, yelling at every jump, whilst the “man with the poker's” friend, perfectly satisfied at the result, fish-like squatted down in the tub, and then quietly suffered himself to be led back to his room.